Archives de catégorie : better to know…?

better to know...?, climate-debate

Antarctic Sea Ice Grows 2 Million Sq. Km – Area As Big As Saudi Arabia. And: Hamburg Spring Arriving Later…

by P. Gosselin, March 28 in NoTricksZone

Antarctic sea ice grows 2 million square kilometers in 4 years…

It’s hard to back up the statement: Global warming is global. Some places have seen warming over the past 40 years (e.g. Arctic), but other places have not.

Antarctica definitely has not been playing along with the man-made global warming hoax. (Yes, man has caused some of the warming, but not all – and it certainly isn’t catastrophic).

Antarctic sea ice surges

Though Antarctic sea ice fell to a “record minimum” in 2017 – after having reached a “record high” in 2015 – the latest data from the National Snow and Ice Data Centershow sea ice at the South Pole has bounced back robustly since, surging some 500,000 sq km above the mean.

On March 26, 2017, Antarctic sea ice measured 3.055 million sq km. Four years later, sea ice reached 5.103 million sq km. That’s a difference of more than 2 million sq. km., which is an area the size of Saudi Arabia!

No way to ignore natural factors

So why would sea ice grow so quickly? If the ice had disappeared, many would blame it on greenhouse gases – absurd of course. And it would be just as absurd to blame the recent gain on global cooling. Obviously there is a complex array of natural factors at work – factors that climate alarmists consistently have ignored over the past decades.

Here’s the March 26, 2021 satellite photo of Antarctica:

Source: NSIDC

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better to know...?, climate-debate

It’s Here: Morano’s New book: ‘Green Fraud: Why The Green New Deal Is Even Worse Than You Think

by M.  Steyn, March 23, 2021 in ClimateDepot

Morano’s probably single-handedly, in a civilian sense, the guy (other than me, of course) doing a better job of ringing the bells alarming people of what’s going on here.” —Rush Limbaugh

“This is a must-read book that shows how the Green New Deal is dangerous, impractical, misguided, and guaranteed to fail with disastrous results for the American people.”  —Sean Hannity, host of Hannity on Fox News

“’Green Fraud’ is the ultimate guidebook to exposing and fighting this Marxist plan masquerading as environmental policy.”  —Mark R. Levin, author and nationally syndicated TV and radio broadcaster

Also see Daily Signal’s interview w/ Morano: “Green Fraud,” a new book from @ClimateDepot’s Marc Morano, exposes far-reaching implications of the #GreenNewDeal & what freedom-loving #Americans can do. 

Here is a promotional video from the publisher on the book: https://twitter.com/Regnery/status/1370512451322716160

“If you care about America’s future, read this book.”—Mark Levin

“A must-read book that shows how the Green New Deal is dangerous, impractical, misguided, and guaranteed to fail with disastrous results for the American people.”—Sean Hannity

A New Lockdown to “Save” the Climate

That’s what’s in store for us if Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Democrats pass their radical climate plan—the Green New Deal.

It is packed with guarantees so completely irrelevant to the problem it purports to “solve” (like “free college” and incomes for everyone “unable or unwilling to work”) that even its boosters have admitted it’s not really about the climate.

The intrepid Marc Morano, author of the bestselling Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change, breaks down the science and the politics to expose the truth about the Green New Deal:

• The science is settled: copious evidence—and prominent defections from the “climate consensus”—make clear we are not facing a man-made climate disaster

• “Climate change” is the perfect Trojan horse for the socialist agenda of the Left

• Fossil fuels lifted the West out of poverty—but our elites now want to deny them to the world’s poor

• The Green New Deal is on a collision course with self-government and our fundamental rights

Climate change has already been “solved” multiple times over the past two decades—with highly touted international agreements—and yet it never goes away as an excuse for leftist policies that will cripple our economy, impoverish the world, and take away our freedoms.

Packed with telling statistics, damning quotations, and real science, Green Fraud is your source for all the facts you need to understand—and resist—the threat.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom — Patrick Moore’s outstanding new book

by Dr. J. Lehr, March 17, 2021 in CFACT

There have been dozens of good books written in the past decade telling the true stories countering the incessant lies of alarmists blaming impending environmental disasters on carbon dioxide emissions.

None have been better than the newest contribution by Patrick Moore and certainly none as up to date as this just published contribution to real science. We all know by now that Patrick co-founded Greenpeace. It was in an effort to stop underground hydrogen bomb testing and later to save whales and Harp seals. He was still studying for his degree in Ecology at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Fifteen years later when Greenpeace became a money machine in the war to scare the public with one environmental lie after another, he resigned and became their public enemy number one. The tipping point was the organization’s initiation of a campaign to ban chlorine, the most important of all 94 natural elements for both public health and medicine.

In many ways his newest book can be seen as eleven brief books teaching the important facts and research on the major environmental issues of our time. They include in addition to the finest argument against human-caused climate change, dying trees in Africa, the Great Barrier Reef, Polar Bears, Species Extinction, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, Genetically Modified Food, Nuclear Radiation, Forest Fires, Ocean Acidification, and the faked deaths of Walruses falling from cliffs in Russia.

What sets this outstanding book apart from most is that while Moore is an academic with a Ph.D. in ecology from UBC (which he describes as the study of how all components of our world interrelate and interact), he has a somewhat unique ability to dive into the weeds on each subject and emerge with a basic understanding of each issue for the reader. While I have read a great deal on all his topics, I was amazed how much I learned, and you will be too.Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom -- Patrick Moore's outstanding new book

He tells us what most of us realize today, that to many if not most activists “the people are a kind of afterthought to be considered only once the perfect environmental policy has been identified, without regard for how negative the impact is on humanity”. The push to phase out all fossil fuel consumption in the next 30 years he says, “is the biggest threat to civilization in the world today.”

In this 204-page 11-chapter book, as you would imagine, its longest chapter (49 pages) Climate of Fear and Guilt, is devoted to climate change. Most readers have read numerous arguments against the well-known fraud of human caused global warming. You may not want to read another. I can tell you, however, that no one has done it better. This well illustrated chapter manages to add common sense ways to convince your friends of the absurd effort by our new administration to convince you to give up your freedoms in order to save the world. He deals with 19 separate crazy predictions laid at the feet of climate change. He skewers them all with excellent technical references. While it is worth the price of the book, it is the less well-known information in the other chapters that produce a truly outstanding book.

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better to know...?, climate and geology

Claim: Melting glaciers contribute to Alaska earthquakes

by UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA FAIRBANKS, March 15, 2021 in WUWT

In 1958, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake triggered a rockslide into Southeast Alaska’s Lituya Bay, creating a tsunami that ran 1,700 feet up a mountainside before racing out to sea.

Researchers now think the region’s widespread loss of glacier ice helped set the stage for the quake.

In a recently published research article, scientists with the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute found that ice loss near Glacier Bay National Park has influenced the timing and location of earthquakes with a magnitude of 5.0 or greater in the area during the past century.

Scientists have known for decades that melting glaciers have caused earthquakes in otherwise tectonically stable regions, such as Canada’s interior and Scandinavia. In Alaska, this pattern has been harder to detect, as earthquakes are common in the southern part of the state.

Alaska has some of the world’s largest glaciers, which can be thousands of feet thick and cover hundreds of square miles. The ice’s weight causes the land beneath it to sink, and, when a glacier melts, the ground springs back like a sponge.

“There are two components to the uplift,” said Chris Rollins, the study’s lead author who conducted the research while at the Geophysical Institute. “There’s what’s called the ‘elastic effect,’ which is when the earth instantly springs back up after an ice mass is removed. Then there’s the prolonged effect from the mantle flowing back upwards under the vacated space.”

In the study, researchers link the expanding movement of the mantle with large earthquakes across Southeast Alaska, where glaciers have been melting for over 200 years. More than 1,200 cubic miles of ice have been lost.

Southern Alaska sits at the boundary between the continental North American plate and the Pacific Plate. They grind past each other at about two inches per year — roughly twice the rate of the San Andreas fault in California — resulting in frequent earthquakes.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Greenland And Iceland Mean Winter Temperatures Continue Cooling Since Start Of The Century

by Kirye & Pierre, March 24, 2021 in NoTricksZone

The February 2021 data for Iceland and Greenland are available from the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), which means the latest meteorological DJF winter mean temperature can be computed.

Icelandic winters have cooled since 2001

We plotted the JMA data for three stations (the ones with sufficient data) in Iceland. Result: no warming over the past 18 winters!

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better to know...?, climate-debate

False Alarm: IPCC Models Say A Warming Antarctica REDUCES Sea Levels -0.8 Of A Meter By 3000

by K. Richard, March 15, 2021 in NoTricksZone

The IPCC-endorsed anthropogenic global warming (AGW) paradigm finds a warming Antarctica results in more precipitation locked up as ice on the continent. This contributes to reducing sea levels: a -1.2 mm/year−1 mitigation of sea level rise over the next 80 years.

In the 4th IPCC report, Working Group 1 (the physical science) reported that as global temperatures rise, “GCMs [models] indicate increasingly positive SMB for the Antarctic Ice Sheet as a whole because of greater accumulation.” This means that by 2100 Antarctica “would contribute 0.4 to 2.0 mm yr−1 of sea level fall.” Over the next 980 years, Antarctica’s ice accumulation will reduce sea levels by nearly a full meter (-0.8 m by 3000).

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better to know...?, climate and geology

MAGMATIC MOVEMENTS REGISTERED UNDER FAGRADALSFJALL VOLCANO, ICELAND — 34,000 QUAKES IN TWO WEEKS, ERUPTION LIKELY

by Cap Allon, March 11, 2021 in Electroverse

A “seismic crisis” has been occurring in the area near Fagradalsfjall since late Feb 2021. This activity has been interpreted as intrusion of magma at shallow depths, which could lead to a new eruption.

Fadradalsfjall is a Pleistocene table mountain in the Reykjanes Peninsula, NE of Grindavik, Iceland.

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Of today’s reawakening volcanoes, those located in Iceland are perhaps the most concerning.

It is this highly-volcanic region that will likely be home to the next “big one” (a repeat of the 536 AD eruption that took out the Roman Republic…?) — the one that will return Earth to another volcanic winter.

Volcanic eruptions are one of the key forcings driving Earth into its next bout of global cooling.

Volcanic ash (particulates) fired above 10km –and so into the stratosphere– shade sunlight and reduce terrestrial temperatures. The smaller particulates from an eruption can linger in the upper atmosphere for years, or even decades+ at a time.

Today’s worldwide volcanic uptick is thought to be tied to low solar activity, coronal holes, a waning magnetosphere, and the influx of Cosmic Rays penetrating silica-rich magma.

The COLD TIMES are returning, the mid-latitudes are REFREEZING in line with the great conjunction, historically low solar activity, cloud-nucleating Cosmic Rays, and a meridional jet stream flow (among other forcings).

Both NOAA and NASA appear to agree, if you read between the lines, with NOAA saying we’re entering a ‘full-blown’ Grand Solar Minimum in the late-2020s, and NASA seeing this upcoming solar cycle (25) as “the weakest of the past 200 years”, with the agency correlating previous solar shutdowns to prolonged periods of global cooling here.

Furthermore, we can’t ignore the slew of new scientific papers stating the immense impact The Beaufort Gyre could have on the Gulf Stream, and therefore the climate overall.

better to know...?, climate and geology

Molecular and isotopic evidence reveals the end-Triassic carbon isotope excursion is not from massive exogenous light carbon

by C.P. Fox et al., Dec 1, 2020 in PNAS

Significance

The end-Triassic mass extinction that occurred ∼202 Ma is one of the “Big Five” biotic crises of the Phanerozoic Eon. It is also accompanied by an organic carbon isotopic excursion that has long been interpreted as the result of a global-scale carbon-cycle disruption. Rather than being due to massive inputs of exogenous light carbon into the ocean–atmosphere system, the isotopic excursion is shown here to reflect regional sea-level change that caused a transition from a marine ecosystem to a less saline, shallow-water, microbial-mat environment and resultant changes in the sources of organic matter. The mass extinction that occurred slightly later, caused by abrupt injection of volcanogenic CO2, is accompanied by only modest changes in organic carbon isotopic composition.

Abstract

The negative organic carbon isotope excursion (CIE) associated with the end-Triassic mass extinction (ETE) is conventionally interpreted as the result of a massive flux of isotopically light carbon from exogenous sources into the atmosphere (e.g., thermogenic methane and/or methane clathrate dissociation linked to the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province [CAMP]). Instead, we demonstrate that at its type locality in the Bristol Channel Basin (UK), the CIE was caused by a marine to nonmarine transition resulting from an abrupt relative sea level drop. Our biomarker and compound-specific carbon isotopic data show that the emergence of microbial mats, influenced by an influx of fresh to brackish water, provided isotopically light carbon to both organic and inorganic carbon pools in centimeter-scale water depths, leading to the negative CIE. Thus, the iconic CIE and the disappearance of marine biota at the type locality are the result of local environmental change and do not mark either the global extinction event or input of exogenous light carbon into the atmosphere. Instead, the main extinction phase occurs slightly later in marine strata, where it is coeval with terrestrial extinctions and ocean acidification driven by CAMP-induced increases in PCO2; these effects should not be conflated with the CIE. An abrupt sea-level fall observed in the Central European basins reflects the tectonic consequences of the initial CAMP emplacement, with broad implications for all extinction events related to large igneous provinces.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Shock News–China 5-Year Plan Will Increase Emissions

by P. Homewood, March 6, 2021 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

China has set out an economic blueprint for the next five years that could lead to a strong rise in greenhouse gas emissions if further action is not taken to meet the country’s long-term goals.

The 14th five-year plan, published in Beijing on Friday, gave few details on how the world’s biggest emitter would meet its target of reaching net zero emissions by 2060, set out by President Xi Jinping last year, and of ensuring that carbon dioxide output peaks before 2030.

China will reduce its “emissions intensity” – the amount of CO2 produced per unit of GDP – by 18% over the period 2021 to 2025, but this target is in line with previous trends, and could lead to emissions continuing to increase by 1% a year or more. Non-fossil fuel energy is targeted to make up 20% of China’s energy mix, leaving plenty of room for further expansion of the country’s coal industry.

Swithin Lui, of the Climate Action Tracker and NewClimate Institute, said: “[This is] underwhelming and shows little sign of a concerted switch away from a future coal lock-in. There is little sign of the change needed [to meet net zero].”

Zhang Shuwei, chief economist at Draworld Environment Research Centre, said: “As the first five-year plan after China committed to reach carbon neutrality by 2060, the 14th five-year plan was expected to demonstrate strong climate ambition. However, the draft plan presented does not seem to meet the expectations. The international community expected China’s climate policy to ‘jump’, but in reality it is still crawling.”

Unusually, this five-year plan did not set out GDP targets for the whole five-year period, but allowed for annual targets, with the first for this year a target of 6% growth. The Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air said that coupled with the emissions intensity target, this could allow the growth rate of China’s emissions to speed up even further, rather than slow down, as is needed.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/05/china-five-year-plan-emissions

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better to know...?, climate-debate

From the non-sense of carbon neutrality

by Jeanne Marcq, March 5, 2021 in ScienceClimatEnergie

Carbon neutrality aiming to limit the rise in global temperature is a lure from the economic points of view and humanity. It is also the weakness of environmentalists, vegans and the “green” provided people of the northern hemisphere advocating worldly decay.

However, the food and energy resources exist in sufficiency  on earth but are poorly dispatched (see FAO data). Developing countries cannot be selfishly prevented from using fossil fuels to build their own economies instead of being plundered by new colonizers. No political regime has ever managed to erase socio-economic inequalities in society. With a world population currently growing until 2050 (FAO), any limitation of food production and economic development would be damaging to humanity.

 

Continuer la lecture de From the non-sense of carbon neutrality →

better to know...?, climate-debate

…Temperature Records…

by Donn Dears, March 2, 2021

There has been an unending stream of media reports about how the last few years have been the warmest on record.

They gloss over that they are only referring to the last 150 years, because temperatures have been higher than today on several occasions over the past 10,000 years, a period between glaciations know as the Holocene.

Recently, a presentation by Tony Heller caught my attention, in which he had facts, coupled with evidence, that shed light on the media’s hypocrisy. 

What follows uses some of the materials from Mr. Heller’s presentation, coupled with additional information. (Relevant links are itemized below.)

The first chart is Figure 3, from Dr. Roy Spencer’s evaluation of the heat island effect.

It shows that the urban heat island effect has skewed reported temperatures higher than where population density is low. Areas with low population density are representative of the vast majority of land surface areas.

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Today’s temperatures are not the highest, or second highest, on record: Not for the past one-hundred-fifty years, or for the past 10,0000 years.

Links

Heller: https://bit.ly/2LrkLXf

Spencer:http://bit.ly/2N4fmpf

Real Climate Science:https://bit.ly/3cVlDhU

better to know...?

“Acceleration” in Sea-Level Rise Found to Be False – An artifact of Switching Satellites

by P. Homewood, Feb 27, 2021 in NotaLotofPeopleKnwoThat

One of the most common arguments climate alarmists make is that rate of sea-level rise is “accelerating” or rising faster every year.

Sea-level data reported from satellites indicate seas are rising approximately of 3.3 mm/year (See Figure 1). By contrast, tidal stations have recorded a rise of approximately 1 to 2 mm annually, a rate which is little changed over the century or so for which we have adequate records. Indeed, as reported in Climate at a Glance: Sea Level Rise,  the oldest tide gauge in the USA, in New York City, shows no acceleration at all going back to 1850.

Why the large difference?

The answer it turns out is simple. When NASA and NOAA launched new satellites, the data they produced wasn’t the same as the data recorded by earlier satellites.

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Figure 2. NOAA sea level data, showing the trend of each of the full individual satellite records and the overall trend. SOURCE: NOAA Excel Spreadsheet

Full post here.

better to know...?, climate-debate

Not a myth: State of the Polar Bear Report shows 2020 was another good year for polar bears

by C. Rotter Feb 27, 2021 in WUWT

The ‘State of the Polar Bear Report 2020’ is now available. Forget hand-wringing about what might happen fifty years from now – celebrate the fabulous news that polar bears had yet another good year.

Press release from the Global Warming Policy Forum

 

Cite as:

Crockford, S.J. 2021. The State of the Polar Bear Report 2020. Global Warming Policy Foundation Report 48, London.

London, 27 February: A prominent Canadian zoologist says that Facebook’s information is gravely out of date and 2020 was another good year for polar bears.

In the State of the Polar Bear Report 2020, published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) on International Polar Bear Day, zoologist Dr. Susan Crockford explains that while the climate change narrative insists that polar bear populations are declining due to reduced sea ice, the scientific literature doesn’t support such a conclusion.

Crockford clarifies that the IUCN’s 2015 Red List assessment for polar bears, which Facebook uses as an authority for ‘fact checking’, is seriously out of date. New and compelling evidence shows bears that in regions with profound summer ice loss are doing well.

Included in that evidence are survey results for 8 of the 19 polar bear subpopulations, only two of which showed insignificant declines after very modest ice loss. The rest were either stable or increasing, and some despite major reductions in sea ice. As a result, the global population size is now almost 30,000 – up from about 26,000 in 2015.

Dr. Crockford points out that in 2020, even though summer sea ice declined to the second lowest levels since 1979, there were no reports of widespread starvation of bears, acts of cannibalism, or drowning deaths that might suggest bears were having trouble surviving the ice-free season.

better to know...?, climate-debate

UN Security Council hears of climate threat, does nothing

by K. Mathiesen, Feb 23 2021 in Politico

When it comes to climate change, bombs don’t work, so the United Nations Security Council prefers words to action.

Tuesday saw the highest profile discussion of climate change in the U.N.’s central body for promoting global peace. But Russia, which holds a veto as a permanent member of the Council, warned against any move to recognize warming as a threat to global security.

Moscow’s stance left the Security Council’s U.K. presidency stabbing at a broken panic button.

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better to know...?, energy and fields

Total CEO sees ‘little sense’ in shareholder divestment from oil majors over climate concerns

by A. Fawthrop,  Feb 23, 2021 in NSEnergy

Divesting from major oil and gas producers on grounds of climate change makes “little sense”, says Total chief executive Patrick Pouyanné, because other companies will simply pick up the excess production.

The boss of the French energy firm urged investors and shareholders to support “big players with large balance sheets and financial capacity” because without them the low-carbon energy transition will not “become a reality”.

Stakeholder pressure on the world’s top oil companies is increasing amid heightened concerns over their contribution to climate change and demands for decisive action to reduce emissions across the energy industry.

Many oil and gas firms, including Total, have outlined recent ambitions to gradually pivot away from fossil energy in favour of electrification and alternative fuels.

But public scrutiny remains strong, with warnings of divesting if shareholders do not feel these plans are going far or fast enough, or the business risks associated with climate change are not being adequately addressed.

 

Oil and gas demand won’t disappear soon, and divesting would leave production for others to take up

Speaking at the IP Week conference today (23 February), Pouyanné called for patience from investors while making a pitch for the role companies like Total have to play in the low-carbon energy transition.

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better to know...?

Wind Power Did Cause The Texas Blackouts!

by P. Homewood, Feb 22, 2021 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

There has been a marked lack of data made public about last week’s blackouts in Texas, which has allowed all sorts of misinformation to fly around. I suspect this is quite deliberate.

I have however found hourly data on the US EIA website. This is what happened on those crucial couple of days:

https://www.eia.gov/beta/electricity/gridmonitor/expanded-view/electric_overview/US48/US48/GenerationByEnergySource-4/edit

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Climate Facts or Leaps of Faith? Governments Can’t Tell the Difference

by Donna Laframboise, Feb 17, 2021 in BigPicturesNews

We have no hard evidence of a crisis. Only expert opinion and best estimates.

Governments are currently fighting climate change to the tune of billions. For this to make sense, each idea in the following chain of reasoning needs to be bulletproof:

#1 – scientists know there’s a climate crisis
#2 – scientists know it’s humanity’s fault
#3 – scientists know we can alleviate the crisis by changing our behaviour

But each of these amounts to a leap of faith. Let’s start with the conviction that something unusual is going on. This planet is more than 4 billion years old. The climate was marching to its own drummer long before humans appeared. It has changed numerous times – sometimes gradually, sometimes violently. Twenty thousand years ago, much of North America was covered by ice.

Because humans weren’t recording and analyzing those billions of years of climatic history, today’s scientists have no way of knowing if anything unusual is going on now.

They can surmise. They can speculate. They can extrapolate. But they have no smoking gun. I’ve written two books about the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). That organization says it’s “extremely likely that more than half” of the global warming between 1951 and 2010 was caused by human activity. It talks about its “best estimate.”

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Southeast Greenland Sea Surface Temperature 1° – 2°C Warmer In 1940 Than Today, New Study Shows

by P. Gosselin, Feb 14, 2021 in NoTricksZone

A team of Danish scientists led by David Wangner published a paper a year ago about the results of a Greenland sediment core from Skjoldungen Fjord, near the Thrym Glacier, which allowed sea surface temperatures to be reconstructed.

The core covers the past 200 years (1796–2013). The scientists find that the SST record compares well with other alkenone‐based reconstructions from SE‐Greenland and thus features regional shelf water variability.

Today some scientists like claiming the present is warmer than at any time in the past 1000 years and suggest the Greenland ice sheets are rapidly melting. But the results of the core reconstruction show that it was warmer in the past, some 80 years ago

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Biden’s climate ‘fix’ is fantastically expensive and perfectly useless

by B. Lomborg, Feb 9, 2021 in NewYorkPost

Across the world, politicians are going out of their way to promise fantastically expensive climate policies. President Biden has promised to spend $500 billion each year on climate — about 13 percent of the entire federal revenue. The European Union will spend 25 percent of its budget on climate.

Most rich countries now promise to go carbon-neutral by mid-century. Shockingly, only one country has made a serious, independent estimate of the cost: New Zealand found it would optimistically cost 16 percent of its GDP by then, equivalent to the entire current New Zealand budget.

The equivalent cost for the US and the EU would be more than $5 trillion. Each and every year. That is more than the entire US federal budget, or more than the EU governments spend across all budgets for education, recreation, housing, environment, economic affairs, police, courts, defense and health.

Tellingly, the European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans recently admitted that climate policies would be so costly, it would be a “matter of survival for our industry” without huge, protective border taxes.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

More trees do not always create a cooler planet, Clark University geographer finds

by Clark University, Feb 14, 203221 in WUWT

WORCESTER, Mass. — New research by Christopher A. Williams, an environmental scientist and professor in Clark University‘s Graduate School of Geography, reveals that deforestation in the U.S. does not always cause planetary warming, as is commonly assumed; instead, in some places, it actually cools the planet. A peer-reviewed study by Williams and his team, “Climate Impacts of U.S. Forest Loss Span Net Warming to Net Cooling,” published today (Feb. 12) in Science Advances. The team’s discovery has important implications for policy and management efforts that are turning to forests to mitigate climate change.

It is well established that forests soak up carbon dioxide from the air and store it in wood and soils, slowing the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere; however, that is not their only effect on climate. Forests also tend to be darker than other surfaces, said Professor Williams, causing them to absorb more sunlight and retain heat, a process known as “the albedo effect.”

“We found that in some parts of the country like the Intermountain West, more forest actually leads to a hotter planet when we consider the full climate impacts from both carbon and albedo effects,” said Professor Williams. It is important to consider the albedo effect of forests alongside their well-known carbon storage when aiming to cool the planet, he adds.

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better to know...?

China Facing Winter Blackouts

by P. Homewood, Dec 23, 2020 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

There’s an interesting story emerging from China:

BEIJING: Tens of millions across China are facing power shortages in below-freezing winter temperatures, as three provinces impose curbs on electricity use due to surging demand and a squeezed coal supply.

Residents, factories and businesses in Hunan, Zhejiang and Jiangxi provinces have been ordered to ration electricity with some areas citing a shortfall in coal supplies, according to local media reports and government notices.

China’s rebound from the Covid-19 pandemic has been driven by energy intensive industries such as construction, heaping pressure on the power grid and coal supplies, said Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.

Earlier this month, Hunan authorities ordered all billboards and outdoor lighting on buildings to power off for long periods each day and a temperature cap on indoor heating at entertainment venues.

Hunan faces a shortfall of 3-4 million kilowatts of electricity this winter, local officials admitted last week, as demand soars due to unusually cold weather that will hit as low as -10°C.

Office workers in provincial capital Changsha complained on social media about being forced to climb dozens of flights of stairs and freezing indoor temperatures as a result of frequent power outages.

“My office heating has already been stopped, and there were blackouts on Dec 1, 3 and 5. Temperatures will drop to -8°C around New Year’s Day, will I freeze to death in Hunan?” one Weibo user wrote last week.

Meanwhile in Zhejiang province, factories in the manufacturing hub of Yiwu have been told to stop operations and streetlights have been turned off at night as part of an emissions-saving drive by the local government, according to media reports and photos circulated on Weibo.

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better to know...?

“Climate Adaptation Summit” turns out to be a fundraising event

by D. Wojick, Fab 6, 2021 in CFACT/CLINTEL

The recent Climate Adaptation Summit 2021 was not about helping nations against the effects of climate change. It was all about finding huge amounts of money. Even worse, it was about planning on finding money, not actually finding it. Even more embarrassing, in some cases it was just about thinking about planning. In fact its primary product was an Agenda. Climate Summits are like that. However, world leaders call it ‘thinking big’.

Climate adaptation is proactive and that is its big strength. It is proactive to the combination of gradual changes (think of the gradually increasing sea level) and excessive events (think of all types of extreme weather). Using Darwin, if mankind does not adapt to these changes in his environment, extinction will be his fate as happened so often to other species in the past.

Climate is a long term statistic, typically 30 years, or more. In this case it is mostly the long term frequency of various extreme weather events, the usual litany of floods, droughts, heat waves, etc., plus there is the usual sea level rise.

The real thing is that adaptation is not about preventing these extreme events, but it is about adapting to those events. For instance, don’t build houses in flood planes or build dikes to keep them dry. Keep in mind that with any form of climate adaptation, the cause of climate change is of no importance.

What does matter, in a very bad way, is that humans are being blamed for all bad weather. This supports the nonsensical thing called mitigation, where human well being is sacrificed in a foolish attempt to end bad weather.

Our friends at the Climate Intelligence Foundation (CLINTEL) have made it a central policy that adaptation is the way to go. In commenting on CAS 2021 they point out that adaptation is actually very profitable, increasing the prosperity and safety of nations.

Here is what they say: “The world should focus much more on climate adaptation and much less on mitigation. This is the conclusion of the global CLINTEL following the international climate summit that took place in the Netherlands over the past two days. Adaptation has already amply proven its value, while mitigation turns out to be inefficient and expensive.

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better to know...?, energy and fields

The spiralling environmental cost of our lithium battery addiction

by A. Katwala, Aug 5, 2018 in Wired

Here’s a thoroughly modern riddle: what links the battery in your smartphone with a dead yak floating down a Tibetan river? The answer is lithium – the reactive alkali metal that powers our phones, tablets, laptops and electric cars.

In May 2016, hundreds of protestors threw dead fish onto the streets of Tagong, a town on the eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau. They had plucked them from the waters of the Liqi river, where a toxic chemical leak from the Ganzizhou Rongda Lithium mine had wreaked havoc with the local ecosystem.

There are pictures of masses of dead fish on the surface of the stream. Some eyewitnesses reported seeing cow and yak carcasses floating downstream, dead from drinking contaminated water. It was the third such incident in the space of seven years in an area which has seen a sharp rise in mining activity, including operations run by BYD, the world’ biggest supplier of lithium-ion batteries for smartphones and electric cars. After the second incident, in 2013, officials closed the mine, but when it reopened in April 2016, the fish started dying again.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

The Rational Climate e-Book, By Patrice Poyet

P. Homewood, Jan 27, 2021 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

I am delighted to give a plug to Patrice Poyet’s new e-Book, The Rational Climate e-Book.

It can be downloaded for free on the link below:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/347150306_The_Rational_Climate_e-Book/link/5fe21ddb92851c13feb1763d/download

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Patrice is a geologist, a geochemist and an applied computer scientist with an interest in various domains like Earth and Planetary Sciences, Astronomy, Finance and Trading, Integration in Manufacturing and Design, Simulation and Defense Systems, etc The development of computer systems has given him the chance to take part in a wide variety of projects in very different areas of expertise. Patrice published 37 articles mostly in peer-reviewed scientific journals, 6 books jointly-reviewed with colleagues, 6 peer-reviewed chapters in books, 64 papers in peer-reviewed conferences, one D.Sc. thesis (1986), and 32 scientific and technical reports for demanding public and private clients (e.g. French Navy, EC-funded R&D projects, CIEH, etc.) and acted as an expert reviewer for several EC R&D projects. He is now using his initial training as a geochemist and his passion for Earth and Space sciences to completely revisit the subject of climate and paleo-climates. The result is this free 431 pages e-Book that addresses all aspects of the subject.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Does “global warming” mean it’s warming everywhere?

by C. Kennedy, Oct 29, 2020 in NOAAClimate.gov

No, “global warming” means Earth’s averageannual air temperature is rising, but not necessarily in every single location during all seasons across the globe.  It’s like your grades. If one semester you get all Bs and Cs, and the next you get all As and Cs, your grade point average rises, even though you didn’t improve in every class.

That’s the way it is with Earth’s near-surface temperature as atmospheric greenhouse gas levels climb. Temperature trends across the entire globe aren’t uniform because of the diverse geography on our planet—oceans versus continents, lowlands versus mountains, forests versus deserts versus ice sheets—as well as natural climate variability. When you’re zoomed in on a particular place, you may not be able to see the overall trend.

It is only when scientists calculate the average of temperature changes from every place on Earth over the course of a year to produce a single number, and then look at how that number has changed over time that a very clear, global warming trend emerges. In other words, it’s only when we “zoom out” to the planet-wide scale that the trend is obvious: despite a few, rare areas experiencing an overall cooling trend, the vast majority of places across the globe are warming.

 

 

Observed trend in temperature from 1900 to 2012; yellow to red indicates warming, while shades of blue indicate cooling. Gray indicates areas for which there are no data. There are substantial regional variations in trends across the planet, though the overall trend is warming. Map from FAQ appendix of the 2014 National Climate Assessment. Originally provided by NOAA NCDC.

The reason a “zoomed out” view makes the long-term trend so clear is that Earth’s annual average temperatures from year to year are found to be very stable when nothing is forcing it to change. Today, though, every decade since 1960 has been warmer than the last, and the last three decades each have been the warmest on record. Relative to geologic time, the warming that has occurred—1.8°F (1°C) over a span of about 120 years—is an unusually large temperature change in a relatively short span of time.

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